Comverse succeeded this week in completing its mission for billing convergence. The goal was to combine and integrate its various billing capabilities into a single suite of billing and customer care solutions that works from a single data model and product catalog.

The Comverse ONE Billing and Active Customer Management convergence tool, launched today, also signals the end of the line for the Kenan brand which had survived through several acquisitions including those by Lucent Technologies and CSG Systems and is now fully incorporated into Comverse ONE.

The single data model and catalog for all the various billing types is the main feature of this new convergence suite. It allows seamless and efficient support for both multi-service and payment convergence through one system. The single data model and catalog approach also reduces the number of integration points.

“Having a single data model means there is no confusion about the source of the data and no synchronization problems. And that is an important step forward,” said Howard Woolf, president of Comverse’ Converged Billing Group.

In addition to supporting pure-play prepaid, pure-play postpaid or hybrids of both, operators can also deploy Comverse ONE to support postpaid subscribers with real-time credit control; to support prepaid subscribers with order management and customer care; or to support any combination of prepaid, postpaid and hybrid accounts. Any deployment mode can be efficiently modified with either option over time to meet phased business transformations or changing business needs, because all modules are based on the same convergence architecture.

Billing Convergence

Norbert Scholz, research director at Gartner, said convergent, real-time charging is vitally important to fully support and monetize next-generation services, as well as to provide operators with the flexibility for key differentiation through personalization, bundled offers and multiple pricing models. Woolf echoed that by saying next generation billing systems have to be flexible and able to change in near real time.

“If you wake up one day and your competitor has a new campaign, you can’t wait six months to react. You have to have your campaign ready the next day,” Woolf said.

The suite provides more than billing convergence and customer care. It also has modules for real-time rating, charging, promotions and session control, customer management, self-care, order management, mediation and content partner settlement.

The products themselves are offered in five modes of Comverse ONE. They include CV for billing convergence, RT for real-time charging, FX for postpaid billing, SV for self service and ME for mediation.

Various modules in the system can now be co-mingled or evolved into any of the four functional domains: real-time rating, promotions and session control; billing and financials; mediation, roaming and settlements; and active customer management, which includes self-service, customer management and service fulfillment.
Comverse is currently deploying its new suite with a quad-play operator.

Of the company’s 275 installations for 160 companies worldwide—who support 500 million subscribers—more than a third offer multiple service types and are in need of billing convergence solutions.

“There is a much bigger opportunity if we can use the knowledge and information in the billing domain to turn it into a revenue generating marketing machine for the operator,” Woolf said.